Will Canon Follow Epson Lead With Huge Storage of Ink?

[vienna01]

Seems Epson is now selling inkjet printers with a kind of CIS[Continuous Ink Supply]. I suspect that a CIS by Epson will overcome the problems experienced with non-OEM CIS. In the Epson ads they suggest the included ink is equal to 20 cartridge replacements. If so, that is close to cost of using non-oem cartridges or refilling special ink carts that are designed to be refilled. The new Epson printers with the CIS-like feature sell for around $400 USD from Staples. Maybe less elsewhere. That means that Epson is not giving away the printer to sell cartridges. Has anyone heard anything about Canon selling CIS-like systems? Will the Epson CIS feature shift the Canon users to Epson?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

such epson models like the L100,200,300,355,800 etc are already on the market for quite a while in the Fareast, Eastern Europe, South America, Philipines etc where the business pressure by 3rd party ink users is probably even higher than in U.S. or Western Europe, and the ET Ecotank models appear to be a 2nd generation already. The tanks take 70ml, and that's the volume Epson is selling for the suitable ink bottles for these models. Some models come with 2 bottles of black in the original sales package. Brother is following that approach with a similar product range with integrated ink containers, as well with the same regional restrictions as Epson is doing. Epson is offering the ET models as printers oriented to business applications, with scanner, no borderless printing, and even monochrome models Mxxx with black only. The L800/1800/855 are 6-ink photo models , but their availability in Europe is not good, and these models are very much overpriced, I assume they are on a phase out schedule. Whether Canon or HP will follow that same approach - I think that's a well kept business secret, they'll observe the competition and decide, the printer companies need to find a way that they are not loosing customers, and they are not cannibalizing their own business with much less revenue from cartridge sales, so we'll see.

 

[vienna01]

Interesting info that they have been around for awhile in far east, S.America, Eastern Europe...
If the full cost of the printers [$399-$599 actual selling price] turns out to be equal or less than refilling special refillable cartridges plus quality ink, I would buy one. I think that folks would like to eliminate the chore of changing cartridges; especially business users. I think business users would be less cartridge price sensitive than I am. In the ads they seem to have a bigger footprint than regular printers. That could be a negative for businesses. I wonder how well they are selling?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

HP is offering another business model, you contract a particular monthly page rate, and they send you new cartridges whenever the current ones run empty. That requires your printer to be online to report the ink status to HP, with a fixed page price you can print full color pages at the same price rate as pages with a low ink coverage. HP tries to tie the customer into the contract, no hazzle with the ink supply, but no option to go 3rd party. I don't have an idea whether such business model is attractive enough.

 

[Smile]

The brother CIS models DCP-T300 DCP-T500W are nice, but only A4? Any brother printer with installed cheap made in china refillable carts turns it into CIS unit as carts are installed into the printer not into the printhead, there are tubes going to print head already, and Brother is far superior to any EPSON L series CIS I've seen.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

yes, hardwarewise, but Brother cartridges currently come with chips, what about those chips, do they reset when I remove the cartridges for refill, do they still create a cleaning cycle after the standard amount of ink, or are there large volume cartridges available ignoring the standard ink volume and standard firmware sequence. I'm still using one DCP-195C, cartridges without chips and 90ml ink volume , I have another one on storage - printer hoarding had been discussed somewhere else....

 

[Smile]

The DCP-195C can use high capacity BK:100ML, C/M/Y: 70ML carts from china.
I don't know about chips as my Brother has none too. I see ARC carts or seen resetters for brother carts. The octopus office has even some overprices original brother fill adapters that can be bought from aliexpress for few $

Wither way the printheads on Brother are piezo as EPSON but are superior in how they are made.

Brother printhead below:

 

[Smile]

If only brother would make 6color printers, but the small 2pl droplets compensate for steps seen on printers with 4 colors compared to 6 color printer. Drops are placed very uniformly spaced not like Canon, HP who "splatter the ink all over the place".

 

[SuperareTech]

If Canon does do this, the printhead would somehow have to be replaceable. Since having an "insert" to substitute cartridges wouldn't probably be something most companies would do nowadays, so the printhead design would probably be something like the HP 88 printheads which fit in like standard cartridges.